Improve with NSSE and FSSE

Registration is still open—but closes soon—for the 2019 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the 2019 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE). Registration for NSSE closes September 21, 2018, while FSSE registration closes in February 2019.

NSSE and FSSE feature:

Survey questions that capture key aspects of the student experience that promote learning and development.

Topical Modules—short sets of questions that can be appended to the core survey on topics such as academic advising, experiences with writing, global learning, and inclusiveness and engagement with cultural diversity.

When institutions participate in NSSE they can be confident that systematic, research-informed efforts have been made to boost response rates. Many institutions have already taken the opportunity to avail themselves of one such effort—namely, posting survey links to student portals or learning management systems. Institutions can also send two additional recruitment reminder messages directly to their students using IRB-approved message templates.

Change Is in the Air! NSSE and FSSE Revisions and Experiments

Every fall, NSSE and FSSE staff discuss potential revisions to the survey instruments, whether it be the core item sets that all participating institutions receive or any of the elective Topical Module item sets. Changes may include the addition, deletion, and/or modification of existing questions.

The NSSE and FSSE core surveys accessed by student and faculty respondents in spring 2019 will implement some minor changes to the previous spring’s core surveys:

While no new questions are being added to either the NSSE or FSSE core instrument, respondents will now be able to select a “Middle Eastern or North African” response option when asked to describe their race/ethnicity, an approach that has been considered by the U.S. Census Bureau.

For NSSE, students will be able only to indicate that they participate on a sports team recognized by their school’s athletic department and will not have the option of providing any details about the specific teams with which they participate.

For both NSSE and FSSE, only one Topical Module is undergoing significant revision—Civic Engagement, to which the following two new item groups are being added:

How much does your institution emphasize the following?Response options: Very much, Quite a bit, Some, Very little

Discussing important social, economic, or political issues with others

Organizing activities focused on important social, economic, or political issues

Being an informed and active citizen focused on important social, economic, or political issues

Being involved in an organization or group focused on important social, economic, or political issues

Voting in campus, local, state, or national elections

Encouraging free speech and expression

How much do you feel supported addressing important social, economic, or political issues in the following? Response options: Very much, Quite a bit, Some, Very little

In course assignments

In course discussions

Outside of class

In addition, respondents will be asked about the frequency with which they “Participate in a constructive dialogue with someone who disagrees with you.” More minor changes to response options and item wording will also be implemented to other Civic Engagement questions.

Another minor revision in this upcoming administration will affect one of four student comment prompts soliciting views of what should and should not change about the campus experience:
“What one change would most improve the educational experience at this institution, and what one thing should not be changed?”

For institutions that do not actively select a student comment prompt, the above question will be added to their NSSE administration as the default option.

NSSE Experimentation. NSSE will conduct two experiments during the upcoming administration to help boost response rates. The first will provide a yet-to-be determined group of institutions generic survey links for use with Twitter. The second will investigate the impact of sending recruitment messages at different times of the day. If interested in participating in either experiment, please contact Shimon Sarraf, Assistant Director for Survey Operations and Project Services, at ssarraf@indiana.edu.

Learn Tips for More Inclusive Data Sharing and Analysis

NSSE data and reports provide actionable diagnostic information about critical dimensions of the undergraduate experience. The ways this information is understood and used is important, however, as demonstrated in the questions we receive from participating institutions about analyzing and interpreting their data, especially in relation to diversity and inclusion. Some common questions ask us how to:

identify subgroups of students who are either struggling or excelling in their experiences

analyze subgroups of students with very few responses

identify more accurately the needs and experiences of underrepresented student subgroups

avoid approaching the data from a deficit perspective

share data and results more effectively with others on campus

Our newly released resource, Tips for More Inclusive Data Sharing and Analysis, offers suggestions for analyzing and comparing the experiences reported by small student populations and for conducting more inclusive analyses. Whether you are preparing reports for internal stakeholders or conducting research to share externally, we hope these tips allow us all to be more attentive to the ways we engage in this work.

BCSSE’s New Administration Option Underway and Revisions Forthcoming

A total of 122 colleges and universities registered for BCSSE 2018, and survey administration is quickly winding down with a few schools still administering the survey to their incoming first-year students. Taking advantage of a new BCSSE administration option, 11 of these BCSSE 2018 institutions are also scheduled to administer the survey to their new first-year students who are starting in January. This past summer we also pilot tested a revised web-based BCSSE that will accommodate transfer students and older students with more relevant questions regarding these students’ recent experiences replacing BCSSE’s standard items on high school experience. The pilot will result in updates to BCSSE 2019 (in the web-based format only) that will allow institutions to collect important information about their incoming transfer students and older students as well as their incoming traditional first-year students. A webinar describing the revised BCSSE 2019 will be offered in late fall/early winter. In the meantime, feel free to contact BCSSE Project Manager Jim Cole (colejs@indiana.edu) with any questions.

NSSE Data Use in Brief on Enhancing Educational Practice

NSSE’s Institutional Report 2018 includes four briefs illustrating themed examples of institutional uses of NSSE data. One of these briefs—titled “Enhancing Educational Practice”—highlights four institutions that have utilized their NSSE data to promote positive changes enriching undergraduate education.

When Andrews University’s NSSE results suggested their students received less feedback from faculty than did students at comparison institutions, the campus developed their own follow-up assessment to determine how best to provide feedback. After Keuka College’s students gave low ratings to their interactions with faculty, staff, and students, the college revamped their first-year experience course as well as their advising process. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology utilized NSSE as a complementary benchmark assessment for a grant they received from the Kern Family Foundation. Lastly, Carlow University mapped their NSSE core survey and Topical Module responses to guide the development of their new core curriculum—The Carlow Compass—and to inform a faculty development initiative to enhance the use of technology in the classroom.

Take a moment to read these stories in full for inspiration and more information on catalyzing change on your campus.

Be sure to check out NSSE Sightings and, if you sight good engagement-related research, findings, tips, or stories, please let us know. As always, we welcome your ideas and feedback!

Reserve Your Place in the 2018–19 VALUE Institute

Registration is open for participation in the 2018-19 VALUE Institute. The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and Indiana University’s Center for Postsecondary Research, NSSE’s home unit, established the VALUE Institute to provide a continuing resource for higher education institutions to document, report, and use learning outcomes evidence to improve student success in college. Through this project, higher education institutions can have authentic student work scored by trained raters using VALUE rubrics and then can receive data and reports from the VALUE nationwide database for benchmarking student learning.

NSSE 2018 Institutional Reports Delivered

This past month, 511 colleges and universities (489 in the US, 16 in Canada, and 6 in other countries) received their NSSE Institutional Report 2018 in both electronic and print formats.

Noteworthy takeaways from this administration include:

Close to 300,000 first-year and senior students from an original sample of approximately 1.2 million responded to the survey.

The average institutional response rate for U.S. schools, at 30%, stayed relatively constant compared to NSSE 2017, with over 63% of all institutions offering their students a survey completion incentive;

A total of 91 U.S. institutions chose to post survey links to their learning management systems or student portals, and the average institutional share of respondents who accessed the survey this way was 24%.

All respondents were offered the opportunity to report their sexual orientation, thus allowing NSSE and all campuses to expand their assessment efforts in this area; and

Eight-five percent (85%) of institutions appended at least one Topical Module to the core NSSE questions.

More than a survey, NSSE is a resource for data-informed improvement. While challenges and opportunities lie ahead for these institutions to keep improving undergraduate education, with NSSE data and resources at their disposal, these schools have many effective tools to inform and facilitate the process. For more information about NSSE 2018, see our Overview.

Are you looking for ways to integrate NSSE results with other evidence of student learning in your accreditation self-study, quality enhancement initiative, assessment project, institutional strategic plan, or other improvement endeavor? Consider joining us at the 4th Annual Using Evidence for Improvement: Teaching and Learning National Institute, to be held July 28–31, 2019, at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA.

The TLNI experience fosters data-informed change initiatives that improve the quality of students’ experiences in courses and educational activities across the curriculum—leading to improvements in student engagement, retention and graduation, and learning outcomes. With a mix of plenaries, structured concurrent sessions, team time, and small- and large-group sessions facilitated by experienced educators from across the country, this residential institute, held at The Evergreen State College, provides a learning space for campus teams to use evidence to develop plans that can guide the work of examining, improving, and supporting what happens in learning contexts across their campuses. The institute fee covers on-campus housing, meals, workshops, sessions, plenaries, and materials.

Teams are encouraged to use a variety of forms of evidence including their NSSE results in their action plans. In TLNI’s previous years, teams have used NSSE data and other evidence to inform a comprehensive communication strategy for new students and to develop a first-year experience, to bring together student and academic affairs to develop an effective and equitable first-year experience, to focus on faculty development and the use of assessment data to improve teaching and learning, to examine students’ participation in and faculty emphasis of high-impact practices (HIPs) so as to design enriched HIPs, to develop new approaches to share assessment data with faculty, and to coordinate institutional efforts to use data to inform student success efforts.

Co-sponsors of the institute, along with the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), are Achieving the Dream, Inc. (AtD), the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), the Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education, and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (WSBCTC).